S Mores

FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT S MORES - PAGE 5

Ceilings, like this year's hemlines, appear to be going up. It's not that the dramatic cathedral and vaulted ceilings used by Chicago area home builders are getting any taller. What's news today is that the average ceiling in many local homes is rising to new heights. While high-pitched ceilings remain popular for living rooms or family rooms in the Chicago area's new homes, the trend in custom housing these days is to have higher flat ceilings in all rooms of the house. Many custom and semicustom builders are putting 9- or 10-foot ceilings-instead of the standard 8-foot ones-throughout new homes to make them seem more spacious and gracious.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa is so familiar it is a cliche for everything Italian, especially the city that built it. The tower is Pisa; Pisa is the tower. No more, no less. The sophisticated traveler, expecting the worst after years of seeing the tower made into Kitsch on postcards and the walls of Italian restaurants--in Chicago, the Leaning Tower YMCA on Touhy Avenue uses a scaled-down replica as its landmark--will be awed by the first view of the real thing. Tilting perilously toward the rooftops of Pisa, the tower is as majestic as it is mysterious.

Traveling between the Middle East and United States brings as much political culture shock as jet lag. What is said in the United States bears little relation to what one hears and sees in the region. A two-month trip in Egypt, Israel, Jordan and the West Bank gives numerous examples as to why this happens. Take Jordan, for example. Every official, intellectual or journalist starts by telling each visitor the same thing: The Middle East is on the verge of war. All Arabs support Iraq's dictator Saddam Hussein in seeking nuclear weapons and his threat to use chemical arms against Israel.

Single homebuyers are entering the housing market in growing numbers because of the economic benefits and the preference for living independently. "Today's single buyer already is aware of the inflation hedge provided by appreciating home values and the inflation shelter offered by tax-deductible mortgage interest and real estate tax payments," said Robert Russo, vice president of sales and marketing for the Hoffman Group Inc. But he cautions buyers, especially first-time buyers, against choosing a home solely for economic considerations.

In a major but unacknowledged policy shift, Mexico is expanding its cooperation with American efforts to deter the flow of illegal immigrants into the United States, say officials in Mexico City and along the border. As a main element of that strategy, Mexico has permitted agents of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to step up their investigative activities in Mexico, the officials said. The Mexican police have also joined recently with the U.S. Border Patrol to apprehend Mexicans and Central Americans along the American border.

Perhaps only an ensemble and conductor with as fearsome a work ethic as the Kirov Orchestra and its indefatigable leader, Valery Gergiev, could have brought it off. Having just finished their own tour of North America in late March, the Russians learned that the Rotterdam Philharmonic was scrapping its entire April tour of the U.S. because of security concerns over the war in Iraq. Quicker than you can say glasnost, Columbia Artists Management's Douglas Sheldon and Gergiev (who is the chief conductor of both orchestras)

There is much more to this country than Marxism and contras. Take for example the Selva Negra mountain inn just north of here, or the idyllic and deserted beaches near the Costa Rican border, or the wild monkey and parrot forests, or the active volcanoes, or the shark-infested lake, or wind surfing on deep lagoons, or touring some of the greenest and most beautiful landscape in the world. While Nicaragua understandably may not be at the top of everyone's list of vacation destinations these days, this is a country full of pleasant surprises for the stout-hearted tourist.

Sipping from a glass of red wine, the bottle resting beside him on a small table alongside a human skull, Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy almost cut a dramatic figure. But with his laid-back appearance (shaggy brown hair, glasses and casual dress) and jocular stage presence, the singer, in town on a short solo jaunt, came across more like a hip college professor than a tragic thespian. In many ways that was the point of Monday's 90-minute, 16-song set at a near-capacity Park West: It was a chance for Meloy to break from the precociousness of the Portland, Ore., quintet and display another, more playful side of his personality.